Current health reporting apparatus, systems, and methods provide individuals with the ability to capture and analyze relevant information about their health, with many platforms integrating wireless devices and feedback into an overall healthcare system. Such apparatus, systems, and methods further may be targeted towards specific groups, or health conditions, while others may provide more general health tracking capabilities, and an individual's use of such apparatus, systems, and methods is often in conjunction with family, community, and healthcare professionals.
Furthermore, there are multiple determinants of human health and wellbeing. The contemporary medical model focuses on physical aspects, with the majority of spend and human resource being targeted to this area. The remainder targets mental aspects of human health, with a small amount addressing social health, including emotional health. It has been increasingly recognized that social determinants of health are extremely important, with metrics such as “loneliness” in the elderly being tightly correlated to hospital admissions. Mental health also is very important and has a major impact on society in direct and indirect costs, such as time off from work. Accordingly, it is believed that not only physical determinants but mental and social determinants increasingly should be taken into consideration in healthcare any health reporting apparatus, systems, and methods should include health reporting with respect to not only physical determinants, but also mental and social determinants.
Moreover, enabling individuals to capture and analyze relevant information about their health is believed to enhance health knowledge and promote symptom management, treatment, and beneficial lifestyle change by such individuals. In turn, this is believed to be important in reducing strain on healthcare systems and improving overall quality of life. Indeed, given that most individuals spend limited time with healthcare professionals, such individuals themselves actually are their own primary healthcare providers, each being responsible for the vast majority of his or her healthcare. As such, there is a need for the healthcare industry worldwide—primarily reactive and disease focused—to shift focus from outpatient appointments to supporting individuals in managing their own healthcare. Such transformation is believed vital in order to cope with a growing burden of chronic health conditions worldwide.
An individual's use of health reporting apparatus, systems, and methods further enhances overall health reporting for use by professional healthcare providers in supporting decision making. Indeed, such use by an individual builds a record of that individual's health and care over time, and overcomes issues relating to the accuracy of information recall such individuals when informing professional healthcare providers during patient encounters. Indeed, patient memory for medical information is often inaccurate and poor, especially if the patient is old or anxious. Without accurate recall and transcription of events, the accuracy of medical diagnosis and appropriate intervention can be compromised. In addition, physicians rely on patient feedback on efficacy of interventions, reporting of adverse effects, and progression of disease. Due to treatment and individual variability, the response to any one intervention is variable, and thus, the feedback can be extremely important. This is especially true in view of the limited time an individual spends with professional healthcare providers.
Fortunately, adoption of such use is easier than before due to advances in—and the increasing popularity of—mobile technology including mobile phones. Such mobility enables frequent data collection independent of time and place. And current health reporting apparatus, systems, and methods are evolving. For example, recent, conventional health reporting apparatus, systems, and methods enable perceptual health reporting generally utilizing words, phrases, icons, and combinations thereof. A patent disclosing such conventional apparatus, systems, and methods is U.S. Pat. No. 8,941,659 B1, which is incorporated herein by reference.
Other recent, conventional health reporting apparatus, systems, and methods gather data from wearable devices including activity trackers and heart rate monitors; health and wellbeing devices, such as blood pressure monitors, glucometers or scales; or environmental devices, such as switches, movement sensors, door sensors, and temperature sensors. Some apparatus, systems, and methods enable tagging of events and interventions, or factors, that provide for identification of the impact they may have on health and wellbeing; some apparatus, systems, and methods enable detection of changes in health, assistance in identifying appropriate interventions, and determinations of whether interventions have been effective or not; and some apparatus, systems, and methods learn from user input to provide personalized feedback, such feedback including alerts when health deterioration has been detected—often through a change in pattern or behavior, alerts when intervention may be required, or both. Apparatus, systems, and methods also analyze and present collected data through a variety of data output methods, including graphs, raw numbers, and averages. In many cases, data is displayed in a visual output, with some tools also enabling advanced data views. While considered beneficial, such feedback and data can be difficult to understand, interpret, or act upon by users and, thus, it is believed that the full benefit has not been realized in practice. Moreover, barriers exist to the widespread adoption and effectiveness of use by everyone of health reporting apparatus, systems, and methods. Such barriers include health literacy levels, computer literacy levels, and reading literacy levels.
In view of the foregoing, it is believed that needs exist for improvements in health reporting apparatus, systems, and methods, including a need for such apparatus, systems, and methods that better engage individuals for making such apparatus, systems, and methods more effective in enhancing decision making and the provision of care, both by the individuals themselves and by professional healthcare providers; and a need for overcoming the aforementioned literacy barriers thereby enabling wider accessibility of health information to enhance health knowledge and self-care, and reduce strain on the healthcare system.
One or more aspects and features of the invention are believed to represent improvements in health reporting apparatus, methods, and systems. One or more preferred embodiments are believed to increase accessibility to, and provide better and intuitive representations and corresponding understanding of, health and wellbeing data of an individual by that individual, leading to ownership and control over that individual's health, improving self-care, and thereby leading to better health outcomes.